When Taylor Sheridan‘s “Landman” debuted on Paramount+ last year, it quickly became one of the most popular streaming shows of all time, racking up tens of billions of minutes viewed. For Billy Bob Thornton, who has created one of the most memorable characters of his career in oil company crisis manager Tommy Norris, the key going into Season 2 was to put the show’s massive success and passionate fan base out of his mind.
“I think the main danger when you have a success is if you try to duplicate it, you can start pretending to be what you were the last time,” Thornton told IndieWire. “So the way we approached Season 2 was to just act like it was an extension of Season 1 — to keep doing what we were doing and make it as natural as possible by not overthinking it and not letting the pressure get to us.”
While Thornton and his collaborators might have treated the new season as a continuation of the previous one, the show is also going in some interesting new directions in Season 2, and has introduced a pivotal new character in the form of Tommy’s estranged father, T.L., played by Sam Elliott. There have been brief glimpses of T.L. in the season’s initial episodes, but this Sunday, he comes to the forefront in an episode focused on the funeral of Tommy’s mother.
Thornton and Elliott had worked together briefly on “Tombstone” and another Taylor Sheridan opus, “1883,” but “Landman” marks the first time the two actors have truly collaborated in a meaningful way. “I knew that the father was going to be a character fairly soon after the first season, but I didn’t know it was going to be Sam,” Thornton said. “When I found that out, I was very happy, not only because Sam is the right choice and Sam and I feel like people would be family, but we have a natural rapport. When we’re in a scene together, it’s literally just like me and Sam talking to each other.”
That state of naturalness is one to which Thornton always aspires as an actor; he has said that he’s always at his best when playing himself, though given the range of his roles — from the misanthropic thief of “Bad Santa” and the doomed brother in “A Simple Plan” to the political strategist of “Primary Colors” and the developmentally disabled hero of “Sling Blade” — one has to wonder what that really means.
“Well, first of all, there are about 50 or 60 of me,” Thornton said. “That’s a question for the psychologists. But essentially, what I mean by playing myself is that you try to do it naturally. I always tell young actors [to] never look at a part as separate from yourself, because once you do, the work is going to be weaker. If you look at a part as a mountain you have to climb and say, ‘Well, Danny is the kind of guy who…,’ then you’re talking about somebody else. I think people want to hear that there are tricks to acting because if there’s a formula, then everybody can do it if you just figure out that formula. But it’s not a science project.”
For Thornton, part of erasing the barrier between himself and the character is relying on people who can give him insight into the world he inhabits, such as “Landman” co-creator Christian Wallace. “I knew some people in oil before, but what I didn’t know I could find out from Christian,” Thornton said. “And Taylor, who does a lot of research.” Thornton was careful in Season 1 to make sure that he completely understood all of the exposition he was required to deliver, and all the oil industry jargon.
“One of the things that really gets to me when I’m watching a movie or a TV show is when the actor seems to have memorized the dialogue [without understanding it], and it essentially sounds like they’re reading you a grocery list,” Thornton said. “You can see it in their eyes, and suddenly there’s not a person there anymore. Audiences can sniff that out, and if you know what you’re talking about, it becomes believable to them. I always want to know exactly what I mean.”
Learning the jargon on “Landman” took Thornton back to his early days on movies like “Armageddon” and “Pushing Tin,” where he had to learn highly technical dialogue. “On ‘Pushing Tin,’ John Cusack and I went to air traffic control school in Toronto to actually learn this stuff,” he said. “If we hadn’t done that, I don’t know if we could have made the movie, because we’re looking at a scope with hundreds of planes on it and spouting off air traffic control commands. Once we understood what it mean,t it made us more comfortable as actors, and that made it real to the audience.”
As number one on the call sheet for “Landman,” Thornton feels he bears some responsibility not only for his own performance, but for the performances of actors who might only be on set for a day or two, yet have to be as authentic and convincing as the stars.
“It’s a hard job to come on to a moving train and fit into this world, Thornton said. “If we have a day player who’s coming in to play an oil guy in a lunch scene or something, I sit at the table and talk with them before we start the scene. I ask them questions about their life and make them feel comfortable and wanted, and that’s very important, setting the tone.”
Thornton said that making everyone comfortable on set is a priority for Sheridan and director Stephen Kay as well. “Stephen Kay doesn’t get enough credit,” Thornton said. “He’s so easy to work with because he was an actor himself, and he gets it. And then obviously, Taylor was an actor. So they understand us idiots. If you set a tone on the set that makes everyone comfortable, everything just runs more smoothly. And I’ve always tried to do that.”
“Landman” is currently streaming on Paramount+, with new episodes dropping every Sunday.